The European Union's Changed Migrant Attitude

The European Commission is set to propose new rules on deporting migrants entering the bloc illegally, according to three European Union diplomats.

The Commission is currently consulting EU capitals to determine the specifics of the directive, one diplomat said. Migration regulations are notoriously complex, involving overlapping national, EU and international law.

A few principles are likely to feature in the new directive, including defining rights and obligations for migrants who have exhausted legal options to stay in the EU and clarifying rules for deporting them to third countries — which could either be their country of origin or a place where they have spent a significant amount of time.

Since the EU adopted its Return Directive in 2008, the push for more and quicker deportations has grown. Europe has shifted markedly right on migration in recent years at both the national and EU levels, with far-right parties making major gains on an anti-immigrant platform and right-wing forces increasingly influential in Brussels.

Politico 

A draft directive on returns could be circulated to member countries' permanent representations as early as February. | Jussi Nukari/Lehtikuva/AFP via Getty Images

Europe, over the past decade,  has found itself pushed too hard by swarms of illegal migrants entering by overland routes or crowded into dinghies through sea passages where tens of thousands of people from Africa and the Middle East risk their lives and their futures determined to make passage to Europe to settle in wealthy states like Germany which in the past obligingly took in altogether a million migrants. Austria found space for many, and the European Union at first expected its members to accept an equal share of the never-ending streams of people -- mostly young men -- intent on finding refuge for whatever reason -- escaping poverty, or discrimination, or war, but not excluding others with a nefarious purpose.

Once the phenomenon of waves of thousands of illegal migrants risking all to make their journey a success became a routine and Europe was groaning at its cultural/social/empathetic seams the uniqueness of the situation became stale and the burden of finding place for foreign nationals whose cultures, heritage, values and tribal sectarianism grated on public sensibilities to the point of final rejection. While Western Europe grudgingly did its part in accepting the foreign waves of migrants, Eastern Europe had a tendency to hunker down in rejection.

That rejection has hardened to envelope the entire European Union. And much as occurred when Turkey demanded funding from the EU to keep its humanitarian haven of millions of Syrian refugees who had escaped the brutality of the Syrian civil war, intact within its own borders rather than maliciously aiding their sea passage to Italy's shores and then on to the greater European target, the EU has turned to making financial deals with African countries to avoid having to accommodate any further non-legal entries. And from there to engage in wholesale deportations.

 

 Nigerians and third country migrants  Jerome Delay/The Associated Press

Anti-migrant sentiments throughout Europe have matured to the point where, from France and Germany stretching over to Hungary, sub-Saharan Africans intent on reaching the continent are now  facing push-back. North African governments that signed on to bilateral agreements with the E.U. include Tunisia, Morocco, Libya and Mauritania, for whom financial incentives have led to curbing of migrant flows. Illegal border crossings dropped substantially in 2024. 

 

Predictably, rights groups deplore this new rejection of illegal migrants from Europe, claiming methods used to ensure sub-Sahara migrants cannot travel unopposed have led to human rights violations. Migrants are being dumped and abandoned without food or water in the Sahara; alternately placed in North African prisons where they face torture, sexual violence and starvation. 

 

Mass deportation from Libya reflects like movements from Algeria where last year over 31,000 people were deported to Niger. Algerian authorities leave migrants at the border with Niger, where migrants are then left with no option but to walk for  hours through the desert before reaching the closest town. Migrants become victim to beatings and other physical violence in Algerian prisons. Deported migrants in Africa are returned to their home countries by the United Nations' International Organization for Migration. 

Many migrants deported from Algeria are still stuck in Agadez, in Northern Niger. Photo : Mehdi Chebil / InfoMigrants